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SEO isn't free. It often costs a lot of time and or money (or both) to get good rankings in competitive industries.
The best strategies involve both, with data from one informing decisions for the other.
Not just both, or either, but a tailored approach based on a variety of considerations.
A bus and a car can both take you from LA to NYC. But if you need to get there quickly and money is not a factor, you’d charter a private jet.
No, they serve different purposes and have distinct advantages and limitations.
In many cases, SEO alone may not replace the need for advertising entirely, but it can significantly reduce reliance on paid traffic.
SEO is extremely extremely overrated as u/fear_raizer pointed out.
The term is a joke - we pay for a blackbox and of all the industries to come with the most ridiculous black magic metrics, SEO would've to be the one.
Write content for your audience - write what they want to know/hear/need.
If you aren't taking care of the basics, everything else is just the proverbial "lipstick on a pig".
Sure, you will rank once in a while - but there's always other garbage (and now AI slop) that will push you out of those rankings.
Stick to low traffic with high conversion (good content), rather than high traffic with low conversion (bad content, so-called-SEO).
You want both. SEO is about improving your organic online presence but it's only one aspect of your broader online digital presence, if that makes sense. It mainly focuses on making sure you show up in search engines, maps, directories, and areas people go to find information. You still need to market through other channels to reach people's eyes - Social Media, Paid Advertising, even traditional media channels like flyers, Radio/TV and word of mouth.
Being #1 in the search rankings for your product or service helps but if it's heavily saturated with competition running paid advertising or other active outreach, passive SEO can only do so much. You're also at the whims of search engines - You can do EVERYTHING right and still get punished in rankings, arbitrarily and without warning.
SEO also can take months to show results- Paid ads are like flipping a light switch, with eyes and impressions starting when the campaign starts; not when Google has decided you have made improvements.
Not recommended at all.
In fact, retargeting organic audience with ads works really well, cause the audience is already informed.
Also, SEO is a long term game. It yields much more profit than advertising, but paid ads are for instant sales and retargeting.
In many industries it can - if you have a team and know what you are doing. I generate 25m ARR with just SEO, but then why not spend to advertise as well?
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SEO isn't free. It often costs a lot of time and or money (or both) to get good rankings in competitive industries. The best strategies involve both, with data from one informing decisions for the other.
Not just both, or either, but a tailored approach based on a variety of considerations. A bus and a car can both take you from LA to NYC. But if you need to get there quickly and money is not a factor, you’d charter a private jet.
No, they serve different purposes and have distinct advantages and limitations. In many cases, SEO alone may not replace the need for advertising entirely, but it can significantly reduce reliance on paid traffic.
Not always. For some campaigns SEO is not an option because of low traffic volume, competition, etc.
Absolutely, I agree. SEO isn't always the best strategy, especially when traffic volume is low or competition is too high.
That's like asking if you can replace sugar with salt in a cookie recipe.
You need both but in the right balance
SEO is extremely extremely overrated as u/fear_raizer pointed out. The term is a joke - we pay for a blackbox and of all the industries to come with the most ridiculous black magic metrics, SEO would've to be the one. Write content for your audience - write what they want to know/hear/need. If you aren't taking care of the basics, everything else is just the proverbial "lipstick on a pig". Sure, you will rank once in a while - but there's always other garbage (and now AI slop) that will push you out of those rankings. Stick to low traffic with high conversion (good content), rather than high traffic with low conversion (bad content, so-called-SEO).
You want both. SEO is about improving your organic online presence but it's only one aspect of your broader online digital presence, if that makes sense. It mainly focuses on making sure you show up in search engines, maps, directories, and areas people go to find information. You still need to market through other channels to reach people's eyes - Social Media, Paid Advertising, even traditional media channels like flyers, Radio/TV and word of mouth. Being #1 in the search rankings for your product or service helps but if it's heavily saturated with competition running paid advertising or other active outreach, passive SEO can only do so much. You're also at the whims of search engines - You can do EVERYTHING right and still get punished in rankings, arbitrarily and without warning. SEO also can take months to show results- Paid ads are like flipping a light switch, with eyes and impressions starting when the campaign starts; not when Google has decided you have made improvements.
No. Seo is extremely overrated
Not recommended at all. In fact, retargeting organic audience with ads works really well, cause the audience is already informed. Also, SEO is a long term game. It yields much more profit than advertising, but paid ads are for instant sales and retargeting.
It's not 2004 anymore.
In many industries it can - if you have a team and know what you are doing. I generate 25m ARR with just SEO, but then why not spend to advertise as well?